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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 10 2018, @09:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the does-it-count-as-a-foreign-language dept.

Mark Guzdial at ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) writes:

I have three reasons for thinking that learning CS is different than learning other STEM disciplines.

  1. Our infrastructure for teaching CS is younger, smaller, and weaker;
  2. We don't realize how hard learning to program is;
  3. CS is so valuable that it changes the affective components of learning.

The author makes compelling arguments to support the claims, ending with:

We are increasingly finding that the emotional component of learning computing (e.g., motivation, feeling of belonging, self-efficacy) is among the most critical variables. When you put more and more students in a high-pressure, competitive setting, and some of whom feel "like" the teacher and some don't, you get emotional complexity that is unlike any other STEM discipline. Not mathematics, any of the sciences, or any of the engineering disciplines are facing growing numbers of majors and non-majors at the same time. That makes learning CS different and harder.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:59AM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:59AM (#621684) Journal

    Yes, why indeed would you want to discuss the original topic of conversation without continuing to shift the goalposts?

    It's foolish to compare those who are trying to accumulate wealth against those who are not. Is it more unfair that an expert golfer improves their game even more or a scientist learns more about their research field than the layman who doesn't even bother to learn anything about these things in the first place?

    Let us keep in mind that there's a huge number of people out there who have pretty much renounced the accumulation of wealth even to the point of declaring those who are interested in becoming more wealthy to be sociopaths and such. So why does it matter to us that they aren't wealthy, when it doesn't matter to them? What is supposed to be unfair about this?

  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday January 15 2018, @11:07PM (1 child)

    by urza9814 (3954) on Monday January 15 2018, @11:07PM (#622831) Journal

    Yes, why indeed would you want to discuss the original topic of conversation without continuing to shift the goalposts?

    It's foolish to compare those who are trying to accumulate wealth against those who are not. Is it more unfair that an expert golfer improves their game even more or a scientist learns more about their research field than the layman who doesn't even bother to learn anything about these things in the first place?

      Let us keep in mind that there's a huge number of people out there who have pretty much renounced the accumulation of wealth even to the point of declaring those who are interested in becoming more wealthy to be sociopaths and such. So why does it matter to us that they aren't wealthy, when it doesn't matter to them? What is supposed to be unfair about this?

    I never said anything about people who aren't trying to invest; I was talking about people who *can't afford* to invest. There's a difference, which I highly suspect you're ignoring intentionally because you don't actually have any response to that.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:28PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:28PM (#623334) Journal

      I never said anything about people who aren't trying to invest; I was talking about people who *can't afford* to invest. There's a difference, which I highly suspect you're ignoring intentionally because you don't actually have any response to that.

      While I agree that there are people who can't invest, I don't agree that they are sufficiently numerous to throw off wealth statistics.